Hazy Days – Oil Painting

Thankfully the weather has been good for the last few weeks. The harvest is late but getting there. Days start in mist and end in mist. This scene is one of those places you pass every day and never see it. Then once by accident you stop, and look and there it is, a subject for a painting. Making a painting from ‘nothing’ is particularly satisfying and this painting is also from a limited range of materials. Just three colours, Burnt Sienna, Yellow Ochre and Cobalt Blue for the bulk of the painting, with a few strokes of Chrome Green Light in the foreground in the last few minutes of painting.

As with recent paintings there was no medium used, just White Spirits. I’m very happy with this method at the moment and I’ll continue to use solvent only. The only drawback is the amount of time spent waiting for the solvent to evaporate. Speaking of which, the ventilation is most important particularly as this is not ‘solvent only’ in the traditional sense. This is floods of solvent sitting on the surface of the canvas, which is flat on a tabletop. I started this tabletop method when I began video recording the painting process over a year ago. The biggest restriction is the canvas size. A 16″ x 20″ is probably the largest ‘comfortable’ size. I could of course lie the canvas on the floor!!

The actual painting time was about two hours, spread over four hours. I’ll have the video of the process for the next post. See you then.

I did a commission a few years back, two 5foot by 8foot paintings. I did them flat on my dining table because they were too big to get into my upstairs attic studio! It helps to be able to paint upside down when you get this large…🙂

The solvent method would not work at this size – too much solvent required and therefore hazardous in many ways. I was thinking about water solvent oil paints to develop this method and allow bigger sizes. I’m worried about the affect of water on traditional oil grounds. Moisture was always considered bad for oil painting grounds as it loosens the glue size or acrylic primers. More issues to investigate!!😦

After getting into thin washes with acrylic and enjoying the process I thought to try your solvent method in oils, working on an easel. Now I know why it wasn’t working so well – I need to work flat. This isn’t my favorite angle to work at as it involves a lot of standing and my paintings, unlike yours go on forever. However, I will don my sensible boots and try again – thank you as always for your teaching…

I probably should be using acrylics with so much solvent everywhere. In my heart I know that this is just a phase I’m going through and I will eventually go more mainstream with this ‘solvent wash’ method just another effect to be used when the situation arises. Thanks again John.

Petite Pursuits
I’m an Irish girl who has finally given in to an unexplored love/obsession with dolls houses and miniatures. My blog journey to document, share with others, and most of all LEARN, starts here.

The Nest
I live in East Galway, Ireland. I am an artist, homeopath and mother to our four boys and little girl, and wife to Fergal. With our little hairy dog, too many cats, hens, cockerel and two little white ducks, we home educate our children.